You are on page 1of 6

Internet and Higher Education 13 (2010) 158163

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and academics' workload and workfamily balance


Thamar M. Heijstra , Gudbjrg Linda Rafnsdottir
The University of Iceland, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Iceland

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Accepted 22 March 2010
Keywords:
Flexibility
Internet
ICTs
Workfamily balance
Workload

a b s t r a c t
The aim of this article is to analyse whether the Internet and other ICT technologies support a workfamily
balance amongst academics. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews with academics in Iceland and
analysed according to the Grounded Theory Approach. This study challenges the notion that the Internet, as
part of ICT technology, makes it easier to establish a workfamily balance. Although the Internet makes some
features of the profession less complicated, like the possibility of working at home, it also initiates a
proliferation of the workload, triggers a prolonging of the workday and enhances a demand for extensive
availability. Whilst the use of the Internet increases the exibility of academics, the Internet and work
exibility are found to increase workfamily conict. The ndings suggest that the combination of exibility
and Internet use makes it increasingly difcult for academics to disengage themselves from work.
2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Icelanders are keen on using technology, with 92% of households
in Iceland having an Internet connection and 98% owning one or more
mobile phones (Statistics Iceland, 2009). Like other Nordic countries,
Iceland has a strong labour culture. In 2008, Iceland's labour force
participation rate was 87.1% for men and 77.7% for women (Statistics
Iceland, n.d.). In addition, statistics from 2009 show that Icelandic
males and females worked an average 46.2 h and 35.8 h a week,
respectively (Statistics Iceland, 2009). Such statistics are high when
compared to European standards (European Foundation for the
Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2007).
The fertility rate in Iceland, which was 2.1 in 2007, is the highest in
Europe (Eurostat Demographic Statistics, n.d.). In addition, Iceland also
occupies the top rank when it comes to gender equality according to The
Global Gender Gap Index (Hausmann et al., 2009). For these reasons,
Iceland provides the ideal circumstances in which to investigate the
position of the Internet and other ICT's amongst career oriented people,
such as academics, and explore how they combine their work and family
life.
In the Icelandic academic system, the Internet has been fully
integrated as a communication, teaching and resource tool. The
communication within these universities largely takes place through
email, by phone, and by online teaching communication programs
such as Blackboard and Moodle. Lectures are generally complimented
by a PowerPoint- or Adobe Reader show, with a result that overhead

Corresponding Author. The University of Iceland, Gimli v/Smundurgata, IS 101


Reykjavk, Iceland. Tel.: + 354 6942959(mobile).
E-mail address: thamar@hi.is (T.M. Heijstra).
1096-7516/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2010.03.004

projectors are hardly used anymore. Resources are found by initially


consulting the online databanks of Scientic Journals, while the initial
verication of facts is completed within seconds by turning to Google,
Yahoo! or Wikipedia. Although the Internet may make certain aspects
of the academic profession less complicated, this article will highlight
the fact that there are certain challenges and drawbacks for academics
regarding the Internet and other ICT usage.

2. A review of the literature


2.1. Flexibility
The term exibility has numerous meanings attached to it in science
(Furker et al., 2007). In this article the focus will be on the concepts of
exible working hours and telecommuting. Whereas the former gives
employees the freedom to decide when to start and end their working
day, the latter, gives employees the freedom to decide where to work.
This is relevant because academics have traditionally enjoyed high
levels of exibility and autonomy as they are essentially their own
supervisors. With regards to their exibility, academics are no longer
fully bound to the locus of the university to practise their profession.
Research has shown that employees benet from exibility at
work; it increases their autonomy, enhances their productivity
(Golden & Veiga, 2005; Dickisson, 1997), decreases their levels of
stress, improves their workfamily balance (Golden & Veiga, 2005)
and increases their job satisfaction (Kurland & Bailey, 1999). This last
issue is also of major importance to organizations (Campbell, 2001),
because satised workers generally work harder (Berg et al., 2003),
take fewer sick days (Kurland & Bailey, 1999; Dickisson, 1997) and
have lower turnover rates (Kurland & Bailey, 1999).

T.M. Heijstra, G.L. Rafnsdottir / Internet and Higher Education 13 (2010) 158163

However, there are potential downsides to both exibility and


telecommuting, for example, reduced social interactions, feelings of
isolation, lack of informal interactions, work coordination difculties,
communication and technology problems (Golden & Veiga, 2005;
Kurland & Bailey, 1999). Furthermore, Kvande (2007, p. 114, p. 121)
points out that with special regard to knowledge organizations, the
shift from standard to exible working hours leads to an endless ood
of work and extensive working hours. Moreover, as increasing
working times become more uid employees spend extra time at
work and less time with their families. Indeed, a study by Blair-Loy
(2009) supports Kvande's ndings in describing how stockbrokers in
rms with scheduling exibility experience more workfamily
conict than those in rms with scheduling rigidity.
2.2. Workfamily balance
In general, employees increasingly demand family friendly workplaces that offer exible working hours (Wax, 2004) as they assume
this will improve their workfamily balance. There are indeed studies,
such as by Golden and Veiga (2005) that indicate that exitime
policies improve the workfamily balance of employees. However, the
evidence is somewhat ambiguous. As has been mentioned previously,
Kvande (2007) states that exibility can lead to a prolonging of the
working hours, whilst the number of paid working hours has been
positively linked to the amount of experienced workfamily conict
(O'Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005). The same researchers found evidence
that academic females experience more work and family related
stress than their male colleagues (O'Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005). This is
most probably due to the fact that women still hold the main
responsibility for domestic and caring tasks within the home
(O'Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005; Coltrane, 2004; Moore, 2004). For
example, in a study amongst eighteen female academics in Michigan it
was found that these women were able to balance career and family
demands but only at the expense of becoming accustomed to little
sleep (Damiano-Teixeira, 2006).
A commonly heard piece of advice on how to balance work and
family life is to set clear boundaries between the two. However,
telecommuting can create challenges as it has been shown that virtual
workers, that is, employees that do not have an ofce but are provided
with the portable means to perform their job, report much less work
family balance than either ofce or home workers (Hill et al., 2003).
Furthermore, a study amongst British female managers shows that
while some of them retire to a private study in their home, others feel
guilty about removing themselves from their family and prefer to work
in the kitchen. Woodward (2007) concludes that the exibility of these
women is insufcient to provide a solid balance between work and
family, as both family and work chores are highly unpredictable at times.

159

enhance teaching, and improve interactions between academic teachers


and students (Xu & Meyer, 2007; Menzies & Newson, 2007), these
interactions can, at the same time, become very time consuming,
especially when there is a lot of email trafc involved (Brunner et al.,
2008; Jones et al., 2008).
There are other drawbacks as well; teaching methods based on the
newest computer technologies may require additional training and
knowledge that can be time consuming and stressful to acquire. In
addition, whilst teaching online courses is generally regarded as more
time demanding than the traditional way of teaching (Xu & Meyer,
2007), there are indications that online teaching is related to burnout
(Kurland & Bailey, 1999).
A third major change the Internet brought about is its signicant
effect on the research component of the academic profession. As has
been mentioned previously, it is conveniently simple to access
resources on the Internet, and collaboration with co-workers abroad
is relatively easy to establish. However, a number of academics feel
overwhelmed by these opportunities and others nd it stressful to
cope with the increased expectations of their surroundings. Moreover,
while their research becomes more easily accessible world-wide,
some feel more isolated, and even though they are more productive,
there are those who feel less innovative (Menzies & Newson, 2007).
2.4. Study objective
The primary objective of this article is to analyse whether the
Internet and other ICT technologies generate a workfamily balance
amongst academics in Iceland. The article discusses how academics
utilise the implementations of ICTs, and to what extent their impact is
on academics' private and professional lives. Given that ICTs are well
integrated into the academic system participants are generally
expected to be positive about them and this article explores how
ICT is received amongst academics.
The study is an addition to the research conducted by Boswell and
Olsen-Buchanan (2007), who investigated the use of communication
technologies after normal working hours of non-academic staff employees at an American public university. Whilst the workload of academics
(Hooff et al., 2007; Doherty & Manfredi, 2006; Jacobs & Winslow, 2004),
their workfamily balance (Woodward, 2007; Damiano-Teixeira, 2006;
Comer & Stites-Doe, 2006; O'Laughlin & Bischoff, 2005; Schor, 2003) and
their burnout levels (Hogan & McKnight, 2007; Lackritsz, 2004; Kurland &
Bailey, 1999) have been the subject of various studies, this current study is
unique. It is to the researchers' best knowledge that this is the rst time
the effects of the Internet and other ICTs on the workload and work
family balance of academics are investigated, in a country where almost
all households have an Internet connection and where gender equality is
more extensive than in any other country (Hausmann et al., 2009).

2.3. Information and communication technology (ICTs)


3. Data and methods
The introduction of the Internet into universities, at the beginning
of the 1990s (Goldfarb, 2006), caused some considerable change
within the academic profession. Firstly, academics now frequently
communicate by means of the Internet (telecommuting) rather than
the more time consuming talking face-to-face. This, in combination
with their exible working hours, gives them the autonomy to work
anywhere and at any time, as long as there is an Internet connection.
Although this development is generally perceived as something
positive, not all academics feel that it provides them with additional
control over their work schedule (Menzies & Newson, 2007).
Secondly, not only did the Internet inuence the autonomy and
exibility levels within the academic profession but it also caused a
transformation in the academic teaching system. Distance learning
courses, online discussion sessions, video and audio recorded lectures,
PowerPoint presentations and communication by email have all become
the order of the day. While it is encouraging that these methods can

3.1. Sources of data


The data on which this article is based, conducted in 20082009,
derive from 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with academics
in Iceland. The interviews form one component in a more extensive
mixed method study on the workfamily balance, work arrangements
and well-being of academics. In the larger mixed method study,
academic family members will have the opportunity to share their
perceptions on these topics as well.
In the current study the respondents of 10 men and 10 women, were
selected on the basis of being a parent, occupying a permanent position
ranking as senior lecturer, associate professor, or professor, and working
at different elds of expertise in one of the three largest universities in
Iceland; The University of Iceland (public institution), The University of
Akureyri (public institution) and The Reykjavik University (private

160

T.M. Heijstra, G.L. Rafnsdottir / Internet and Higher Education 13 (2010) 158163

institution). In total, the Icelandic population of senior lecturers, associate


professors and professors exceeds just over 600.
The interviews lasted on average 60 min and were primarily
conducted at the university setting, although some participants opted
for their home. Respondents replied to a range of semi-structured
questions such as: Can you describe a typical workday to me? Can you
tell me about the way you combine your work and private life? Do you
think that the Internet has made your worklife easier? The questions
revolve around themes relating to the organisation of work, leisure
and family life, domestic tasks, childcare arrangements, workload, and
the use of Internet and other ICTs. Participant anonymity is protected
by the use of ctitious names.
3.2. Method of analysis
For this study the qualitative data were transcribed and analysed
according to the Grounded Theory Approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967;
Charmaz, 2007). The objective of such analysis is to describe the
dynamics of the subject under study, as opposed to gaining an
impression to the extent of the phenomenon observed (Noiseux &
Ricard, 2007). The use of this approach was particularly appropriate
for this study because it allows for detailed insight into a rather
complex and comprehensive topic. By using this approach participants were able to identify the critical elements that are important to
them, which may not have been elicited by quantitative data methods.
In contrast to working with most quantitative data the sample size
for a Grounded Theory Approach can be rather small (Ambert et al.,
1995). Creswell (2007, p. 126) recommends a sample size between 20
and 30 individuals in order to reach a saturation point of data.
Charmaz (2007, p. 114) holds similar views but emphasises that the
ideal sample size is hard to determine and should depend on the
research topic and claims that are made in the study.
The initial analysis started while data were still being collected,
which allowed for adjustments to the interview questions during the
collecting process. For example, after the 12th interview a specic
question was added about the amount of working hours of participants:
How many hours do you work per week? Furthermore, by studying each
interview prior to the conducting the next one, data are comparable
immediately. The interviews were analysed according to open coding in
which the interviews are segmented, sorted by their meanings and
eventually clustered into descriptive categories. The next step in the
analysing process is to create memos as to explore the ideas of the coded
categories further and to generate a theory (Charmaz, 2007, p. 912;
Cresswell, 2007, p. 239).
4. Results
4.1. Demographics
The sample demographics are as follows: Participant's age ranges
from 33 to 61 years old, with 19 married or cohabiting participants,
and one single. All individuals have between one and four children,
with an average of 2.7 children, which is higher than the total fertility
rate of 2.1 amongst Icelandic women in 2007 (Eurostat Demographic
Statistics, n.d.). The children vary in age from being newborns to over
16 years old. Ten participants (ve men and ve women) have at least
one child of six years or younger, while six participants only have
children older than 16 years old (three men and three women).
4.2. Working hours
In order to explore how academic teachers divide their time
between work and family life, participants were asked about their
working hours. Many of them have difculties describing how long
their workday lasts with answers ranging from: ...between 45 and
50 hours, to: ...probably 60 hours per week. Some answers show a

negative skew. That is, most participants indicate to be on the higher


margin of this range, with a 45 to 50 h working week being more of an
exception. These indications, however, seem to be modest though and
they do sometimes contradict additional information received during
the interviews. For example, Kristjn indicates that he works
approximately 60 h a week, but he also says that his workday only
ends when he falls asleep.
In addition, Iris, seems to work when she is not asleep. Iris explains
that she works at the University from nine o'clock to ve o'clock, but
that she likes to work at home during the weekends and in the
evenings, because then she can concentrate without being interrupted. She comments about her sleeping patterns:
but I do sleep, I am not this person that can cut down on
sleeping like I know many women can, I am not the Thatcher type
in that department, I have to sleep as well...
Hence, what prevents Iris from working literally around the clock is
that she needs enough sleep to keep up her extensive work schedule.
There are no indications for a gender difference in the number of
working hours of Icelandic academics, but the participants work more
than the national average which, as mentioned earlier, was 35.8 h for
females and 46.2 h for males in 2008 (Statistics Iceland, 2009). The
academic women interviewed thus appeared to work proportionally
more than academic men as compared to the national averages.
Nevertheless, it is hard to be specic as participants have difculties
counting their working hours. This is the direct result of two features of
their profession. In the rst place, it becomes difcult to free oneself from
work, because of exible working schedules as the Internet and other ICTs
make it possible to always work anywhere and everywhere. As a result
working around the clock is not uncommon although in academia those
extra hours are not accounted for. Secondly, interviewees nd it
problematic to distinguish between leisure and work, as they often
overlap. Ragnar replies when he is asked how much he works:
It is so difcult to count [laughs]. I mean in academia your profession
is also your hobby, so you'll be doing something totally different but
you are thinking about something you are working on. In the end,
you may nd a little bit of time to sit down and get something
written down. So that is why it is difcult to count.

Ragnar makes it clear that part of the profession, such as developing


new ideas, takes place in the academic's mind, something which is not
readily recognised as work because it can be combined with other tasks
at the same time. Developing new ideas is therefore a grey area,
somewhere in between working and not working, and this is the third
feature of the profession that makes it difcult to count working hours.
Later in the interview Ragnar reveals that paradoxically the major
downside of his exible work schedule is the fact that his hobby and work
overlap:
It's much more difcult to keep ...a clear distinction between your
free time and your work time and if you are not careful, all your
time will be swallowed up by work.
Regardless of the uctuating working hours and despite the blurred
boundary between work and private life, neither Ragnar nor the other
participants are willing to give up their current work rhythm for a 9 to 5
job. They are too fond of the lifestyle, treasure the exibility and
autonomy that come with the profession and they cannot perceive how
they would manage to turn their brain off at ve o'clock. Also, it seems
that interviewees link 9 to 5 jobs to a necessity to spend time, while in
their own job they feel they are using their time.

T.M. Heijstra, G.L. Rafnsdottir / Internet and Higher Education 13 (2010) 158163

4.3. The usage of ICTs during a regular workday


The Internet and other ICTs play a central role during the workday of
academics. For Nna, a normal workday starts at seven o'clock in the
morning when she tries to clear up her mailbox before her daughter
wakes up. Her colleague Birna, who is older than Nna and does not have
small children, usually wakes up at ve o'clock to check on incoming
emails. Most participants though, wait until they have arrived at the
University, somewhere between eight and ten o'clock, to see what is in
their mailboxes. Ptur's inbox functions as his agenda, telling him what
things he has to attend to that day.
After the checking of inboxes, the work activities of participants
start to differentiate; there are teaching, research and administrative
tasks to be done. The majority still teaches in the traditional way i.e.
in the classroom, but this form of teaching has also been heavily
inuenced by new computer technologies. Participants generally feel
that their teaching load has increased as the preparation of a lecture is
now more time consuming than before. Students rely more on their
teachers by demanding extensive handouts and PowerPoint presentations whilst at the same time trying to avoid reading the course
book. Jla describes her concern:
What the Internet has changed is that students depend too much on
lecture materials while there is too much feeding going on. When I
started we could hand students a book and they would read it, but
now they only read the PowerPoint [slides] and they think it is a lot of
work if they need to read something extra. I think it is a universal
problem that lots of students do not read anything.
Tmas speaks along the same lines as Jlia:
...when I was in university, the teachers just came to class and
projected these overhead [transparencies] and you would sit
down and write, and write, and write, and write. Now, the
students want to have all the [PowerPoint] material at least two
days in advance, and it should be laid out nicely and so on I am
all for it, you know, I do it, but it creates of course a lot more work.
After teaching, participants return to their ofces, or take off to
work on their research elsewhere. The wireless Internet and the
possibility of connecting the ofce phone to a mobile phone give
academics the opportunity to optimise their exibility. Interviewees
make frequent use of alternative work places where they can nd the
peace and quiet needed for writing; they work at home, in the local
bookstore, at a quiet bakery, in summer cottages or even abroad.
Nevertheless, whether at the University or not, the majority of
participants keep checking their emails throughout the day. Three of
the more experienced academics, Gubjrg, ris, and Le mention the
importance of getting away from the computer, in order to make sure
that emails do not start to take control over their lives. Their concern
is well-founded, several participants, including Birna, who checks her
email at ve o'clock in the morning, experience withdrawal
symptoms when they are unable to access their inbox for a few
days; they get restless and start to wonder what emails are piling up
in their mailboxes. The interviewees indicate that they like to be on
top of their emails, both because they are afraid of missing out on
something important, and because it gives them the feeling that they
are in control of their workload. Sigurur, one of the younger male
participants, has been aware of an increasing number of emails in his
inbox over the last few years:
...a couple of years ago I started to monitor how much email I get
each year because I le my emails simply by year. So now I know
that the number of emails that I get each year has gone up by
approximately 20%. Each new year I get approximately 20% more
email than the year before, and so there will be more than 6000

161

emails in my inbox at the end of this year, and that is after I have
deleted everything that has nothing to do with me [junk mail].
And Sigurur continues:
...but then I also monitored the number of emails that I sent out
and that has not increased as much, I sent out fewer than 2000
emails per year.
The amount of emails Sigurur receives and sends seems to be the
norm rather than the exception. Other academics spoke of receiving
about 70 emails a day, approximately 80 emails after the weekend,
and of hundreds of emails after three to four days. Hildur, an elderly
female academic simply states that emails are killing.
When participants come home from work, anywhere between
15.30 and 21.00 h, they check their email again. For Maria ve o'clock
has always been rush hour because of family demands which she tries
to combine with email trafc:
I have always been [snaps her ngers] 4.30! I have to go home! Pick
up [the kids]! I have to cook and all that stuff, but I usually start by
putting my computer up at home, check if I have gotten any emails
since I left and I go between [domestic] chores and work. I sit down at
the computer check [my email], maybe try to nish something, send
out one or two emails, and then I maybe get disturbed again. And I
am doing it whilst I am cooking or something like that.
While the female participants with young children are more prone
to combining family and work chores like Maria does, the male
participants with young children are less likely to do so. They prefer to
wait until the children have been put to bed before they pull out their
laptops again. Ragnar, for example, explains why he usually does not
try to combine caring tasks and work at the same time:
Well, you nd out quickly that you really can't do both at the same
time. You can't be working on the computer and having the kids
running around at the same time because they will mess with you
[laughs]. They will climb on your shoulders and then they come
and touch the key board and they will do all sorts of things
because they see the computer as a rival, you know.
All of the participants go back to work in the evening. Men are
more likely than women to return to the University to continue to
work, but most of the interviewees return to their laptops at home,
and usually work until 22.00 or 23.00 h. Participants work in the
evening on things that they could not nish during the day, on their
research that will help them to progress with their careers, on
international projects, on emails from students and on contacts with
co-workers in different time-zones. But ending the day by checking
one's email can be time consuming, as lf discovered:
In the evening I very often get email, maybe at 10 o'clock, from a
student, and when I reply to it instantly, I get another question.
Then I am like ooh this is not a good idea to be here ready at 10
o'clock in the evening and answering someone's email.
While student emails in the evening and weekends can cause
irritation, participants are more tolerant when it comes to research
related emails and phone calls. Eirkur's private life, for example, is
regularly intruded upon by colleagues that call him up on Saturday
night to discuss work. However, instead of showing irritation, Eirkur
defends his colleagues. He justies their calls by explaining that they
ask rst whether this is a convenient time or not:
I mean, it's not as depressing as it sounds [laughs]. It sounds like
you always work but it's really, you work with people, and it's
really something that you have a joint interest in. So somebody
calls you and people almost always say so what's your

162

T.M. Heijstra, G.L. Rafnsdottir / Internet and Higher Education 13 (2010) 158163

situation? And you say, Well I am in the middle of making


dinner, I'll call you when I get a chance. So it's not oppressive in
that way but at the same time it adds to this kind of pattern, it's
not really keeping work and domestic life separated.

would sit [and work]. So for the rst two weeks of our four week
holiday...I mean I wasn't doing it continuously but two, three hours a
day, yeah.
5. Discussion

All in all, only few of the interviewed academics feel that the
Internet has denitely made their workfamily balance easier, and
women are in the forefront of this group. However, the vast majority
identies both pluses and minuses when it comes to the relation
between the Internet and their worklife. Participants appreciate the
fact that the Internet makes it possible for them to produce more
output per unit of time, that it is easier to obtain information and
easier to establish international contacts. The downsides are that the
Internet enhances the demand that people be available at all times,
raises expectations amongst people and consequently increases the
work pressure and workload of academics. Another drawback is the
fact that email trafc has become so extensive that it consumes a lot of
time.
4.4. The usage of ICTs for and during academics' private time
Internet and other ICTs are not only useful for work, but for daily
private routine as well. Mobile phones give academics a sense of
security, in that they are only one phone call away from their children.
Furthermore, as almost everyone in Iceland is connected to the
Internet, this is an effective way for busy Icelandic academics to keep
in touch with family and friends. With the help of Skype, MSN, email
and mobile phones they stay in contact. ICTs also make it possible to
stay in close contact with the home front while being abroad for work.
Ptur, a young academic, feels the scale may have tipped:
When I was younger and we were travelling abroad, I mean...Yeah, I
remember I would call in maybe once a week if I got to a payphone
that was not too expensive or got a pay card or something, and that
was ne. Now, if you are not sending text messages at least 34 times
a day when you are abroad, you must be hit by a train or something
[laughs]. It's just ridiculous [laughs].
Hence, it seems that the family has become more demanding as
well because of widespread ICT use and its straightforward accessibility. What has remained though is the perception that a family
holiday represents the ultimate family time. However, for academics
and their families this becomes more and more of a utopia as ICTs
make it somewhat difcult for academic teachers to disengage from
their work when they are on family holiday. Jla and her partner used
to work during the family holiday when their children were small. She
remembers one particular incident: The oldest son once said: Mom
when are we going to be on summer holiday like others? [laughs].
Many of the participants nd it very difcult to leave their work
behind and cannot resist the temptation of either bringing their
laptop and cell phone, or visiting an Internet caf during the family
holiday. Most would prefer to go on holiday somewhere where there
is no Internet or mobile phone connection at all, in order not to be
tempted to check on work-related items, but nding such a location
becomes increasingly difcult. Even in a country as isolated and
sparsely populated as Iceland it is hard to nd an area that is out of
reach of a communication network. Mara is a good example of an
academic who abused this reality in her last family holiday:

Last summer we went to a [cottage] and there was an Internet


connection [laughs]. It was not very stable but it was there, and so I
was nishing off an article with a student that had to be sent before a
certain deadline to a journal and I told my partner, I know we are
going on holiday but this has gotten delayed and we need to [nish it],
okay? So they would go out to the swimming pool or something and I

This study has shown that academics are unwilling to change to a 9 to


5 job as they are reluctant to give up their exibility and its accompanying
lifestyle. It does appear, however, as if exibility in academia is something
of a utopia, as the concept in reality refers to the possibility of prolonging
one's working hours. Similarly to Kvande (2007), the current ndings give
the impression that exibility, in combination with ICTs, challenges
academics to bring work into the home and sacrice their break during
evenings and weekends. In addition to Boswell and Olsen-Buchanans'
research (2007), this study indicates that temptation is, at least partially,
caused by the fact that both male and female academics are determined to
advance their careers.
Akin to the working patterns of young academics, more experienced
academics are also ambitious and enjoy working on their research.
However, they seem to be more cautious of the consequences of excessive
ICT use. In contrast to the younger academics, the more experienced
academics are prone to emphasise the importance of disengaging
themselves from the computer as they see a potential danger in the
computer taking over and controlling their lives. Furthermore, it is
concerning that some of the participants show withdrawal symptoms
when they cannot access their inbox. This is a message that should be
taken seriously, as it can be linked to increased risk levels of burnout
(Kurland & Bailey, 1999).
As ICTs have become so integrated into the academic world, it was
somewhat surprising to uncover that the vast majority of participants
indicated both positive and negative aspects of ICTs. At the outset, it
was expected that participants would primarily show a positive
attitude, as the use of ICTs is so much a part of their profession. Even
more remarkable is the nding that women more often than men
implied that the Internet made their worklife easier. This outcome is
surprising as the descriptions of their workdays give a rather different
impression.
That is, the interviews give the feeling that the daily life of academic
women is more of a struggle than that of men. There is the desperate
attempt of Nna to try to clear out her mailbox before 7 a.m. and Maria
who anxiously tries to work at home whilst attending to her family's
needs. Those two women represent all the other women in the sample
that state that they manage reasonably well, but only at the expense of
themselves. Men, on the other hand, seem to put up less of a struggle
with the workfamily balance as they do not try as hard to combine the
two at the same time.
Accordingly, even if participants frequently state that their profession is also their hobby, their working hours will still interfere in some
way with their family life, as Eirkur demonstrated when he defended
his colleagues for calling him up on a Saturday evening. This then raises
the question, as to how calling someone on a Saturday evening about
work-related business can possibly not interfere with their private life.
Of course, the same holds for participants that continue to work during
their family holiday in that obviously this behaviour will clash with
family time.
In agreement with the ndings of Woodward (2007) the present
study indicates that exibility in itself is an insufcient tool to provide
a workfamily balance for academics for the reason that the
profession and family life are both highly unpredictable at times. In
addition, the study notes that ICTs are not the cut-and-dried solution
to workfamily conicts but rather that they are a source for making
home become a venue for work. In summary, with the arrival of new
ICTs, the expectations of people have risen and academics are simply
expected to be able to handle more work than ever. Thus, ICTs have
not made the lives of academics easier; rather they have made it
increasingly difcult for academics to free themselves from work.

T.M. Heijstra, G.L. Rafnsdottir / Internet and Higher Education 13 (2010) 158163

6. Conclusion
It has been shown in this article that ICTs play an important role in
the discussions on both exibility and workfamily conict. It is for
this reason that the integration of ICTs into everyday life creates a
need for advanced theories on the subject of exibility and work
family conict. While Icelandic academics clearly do not want to go
back to a time period of working from 9 to 5, it is certain that ICTs
create new problems.
One of the major dilemmas is that it becomes increasingly difcult to
disengage oneself from work. This tendency, as has been demonstrated,
can enhance both workfamily conict and increase the risk of burnout.
All in all, while it is a positive development that ICTs are responsible for
academics no longer having to sit and work behind their desks all day,
they are at the same time a cause of workfamily conict and possible
burnout, as it becomes more challenging for academics to escape the
obligations attached to their profession.
Acknowledgements
We thank the University of Iceland Research Fund for supporting the
study. We thank the two blind reviewers for their useful comments.
References
Ambert, A., Adler, P., Adler, P., & Detzner, D. (1995). Understanding and evaluating
qualitative research. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 879893.
Berg, P., Kalleberg, A., & Appelbaum, E. (2003). Balancing work and family: The role of
high-commitment environments. Industrial Relations, 42(2), 168188.
Blair-Loy, M. (2009). Work without end? Scheduling exibility and work-to-family
conict among stockbrokers. Work and Occupations, 36(4), 279317.
Boswell, W., & Olsen-Buchanan, J. (2007). The use of communication technologies after
hours: The role of work attitudes and worklife conict. Journal of Management, 33(4),
592610.
Brunner, B., Yates, B., & Wood, J. (2008). Mass communication and journalism faculty and
their electronic communication with college students: A nationwide examination.
Internet and Higher Education, 11, 106111.
Campbell, S. (2001). Work cultures and work/family balance. Journal of Vocational
Behaviour, 58, 348365.
Charmaz, K. (2007). Constructing grounded theory. A practical guide through qualitative
analysis. London: Sage Publications.
Coltrane, S. (2004). Elite careers and family commitment: It's still about gender. The
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 596, 214220.
Comer, D., & Stites-Doe, S. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of faculty women's
academicparental role balancing. Journal of Family and Economical Issues, 27, 495512.
Creswell, J. (2007). Qualitative inquiry & research design choosing among ve approaches,
2nd edition Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.
Damiano-Teixeira, K. (2006). Managing conicting roles: A qualitative study with
female faculty members. Journal of Family and Economical Issues, 27(2), 310334.
Dickisson, K. (1997). Telecommuting got your homework done? Benets of a exible
work option that is gaining currency in the '90s, and how to get around its potential
pitfalls. CMA Magazine, 70(10), 1314.
Doherty, L., & Manfredi, S. (2006). Action research to develop worklife balance in a UK
University. Women in Management Review, 21(3), 241259.
European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (2007).
Fourth European working conditions survey. Luxemburg: Ofce for Ofcial Publications
of the European Communities.

163

Eurostat Demographic Statistics. (n.d.). Total fertility rate 2007. Retrieved on the 15th
of December 2009 at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/graph.do;jsessionid=
9ea7974b30dcf5dc3a9aa17b44ac842c818816276241.e34SbxiPb3uSb40Lb34LaxqRaxy
Te0?tab=graph&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tsdde220&toolbox=type.
Furker, B., Hkansson, K., & Karlsson, J. (2007). Reclaiming the concept of exibility. In
B. Furker, K. Hkansson, & J. Karlsson (Eds.), Flexibility and stability in working life
(pp. 117). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine.
Golden, T., & Veiga, J. (2005). The impact of extent of telecommuting on job satisfaction:
Resolving inconsistent ndings. Journal of Management, 31(2), 301318.
Goldfarb, A. (2006). The (teaching) role of universities in the diffusion of the Internet.
International Journal of Industrial Organization, 24, 203225.
Hausmann, R., Tyson, L., & Zahidi, S. (2009). The global gender gap report. Geneva: World
Economic Forum.
Hill, E., Ferris, M., & Mrtinson, V. (2003). Does it matter where you work? A comparison of
how three work venues (traditional ofce, work ofce, and home ofce) inuence
aspects of work and personal/family life. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, 220241.
Hogan, R., & McKnight, M. (2007). Exploring burnout among university online
instructors: An initial investigation. Internet and Higher Education, 10, 117124.
Hooff, M., Geurts, S., Kompier, M., & Taris, T. (2007). Workdays, in-between workdays,
and the weekend: A diary study on effort and recovery. International Archives of
Occupational and Environmental Health, 80, 599613.
Jacobs, J., & Winslow, S. (2004). Overworked faculty: Job stresses and family demands.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 596, 104129.
Jones, S., Johnson-Yale, C., Millermaier, S., & Prez, F. (2008). Academic work, the
Internet and U.S. college students. Internet and Higher Education, 11, 165177.
Kurland, N., & Bailey, D. (1999). Telework: The advantages and challenges of working
here, there, anywhere, and anytime. Organisational Dynamics, 54, 5368.
Kvande, E. (2007). Doing gender in exible organizations. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.
Lackritsz, J. (2004). Exploring burnout among university faculty: Incidence, performance, and demographic issues. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(1), 713729.
Menzies, H., & Newson, J. (2007). No time to think academics' life in the globally wired
university. Time & Society, 16(1), 8398.
Moore, G. (2004). Mommies and daddies on the fast track in other wealthy nations. The
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 596, 208213.
Noiseux, S., & Ricard, N. (2007). Recovery as perceived by people with schizophrenia,
family members and health professionals: A grounded theory. International Journal
of Nursing Studies, 45, 11481162.
O'Laughlin, E., & Bischoff, L. (2005). Balancing parenthood and academica: Work/family
stress as inuenced by gender and tenure status. Journal of Family Issues, 26, 79106.
Schor, N. (2003). The supportive academic environment: Ingredients for success. Pediatric
Neurology, 29(5), 370373.
Statistics Iceland. (2009). Upplsingatkni. Notkun heimila og einstaklinga tlvum og
neti 2009. (Information technology, use of computers and the Internet by households
and individuals 2009), 1, 120.
Statistics Iceland (n.d.). Labour market. Retrieved on the 14th of December 2009 at http://
www.statice.is/Statistics/Wages,-income-and-labour-market/Labour-market.
Wax, A. (2004). Family-friendly workplace reform: Prospects for change. The ANNALS of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 596, 3661.
Woodward, D. (2007). Worklife balancing strategies used by women managers in
British modern universities. Equal Opportunities International: equality, diversity
and inclusion, 26(1), 617.
Xu, Y., & Meyer, K. (2007). Factors explaining faculty technology use and productivity.
Internet and Higher Education, 10, 4152.

FURTHER READING
Esterberg, K. (2002). Qualitative methods in social research. USA: The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.

You might also like